State legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors. The court for the trial of impeachments may differ somewhat from the federal model — in New York, for instance, the Assembly (lower house) impeaches, and the State Senate tries the case, but the members of the seven-judge New York State Court of Appeals (the state's highest, constitutional court) sit with the senators as jurors as well (NYS Constitution, Article VI, §24).
Impeachment and removal of governors has happened occasionally throughout the history of the United States, usually for corruption charges. A total of at least eleven U.S. state governors have faced an impeachment trial; a twelfth, Governor Lee Cruce of Oklahoma, escaped impeachment conviction by a single vote in 1912. Several others, most recently Connecticut's John G. Rowland, have resigned rather than face impeachment, when events seemed to make it inevitable.
The most recent impeachment of a governor occurred on January 9, 2009.
The Illinois House of Representatives voted 114-1 to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich. The only dissenter was State Representative Deborah Mell, a Democrat and Blagojevich's sister-in-law, who had been sworn into her first term representing Chicago earlier that day.
The Illinois House again voted to impeach Blagojevich on January 14, 2009, with a 117-1 vote, with Mell again the lone dissenter. On January 29, the Illinois State Senate, by a vote of 59-0, formally removed Blagojevich from the Office of Governor of the State of Illinois.
He was the eighth state governor removed from office, after being impeached and convicted of high crimes, in American history.
The procedure for impeachment, or removal, of local officials varies widely. For instance, in New York a mayor is removed directly by the governor "upon being heard" on charges — the law makes no further specification of what charges are necessary or what the governor must find in order to remove a mayor.
